Suburbia, CO2, Sator arepo tenent opera rotas, Il Vecchio, The Cave, The Palaces of Carrara, The Doge Ship, Divinare, Plato 3000, Mord Im Arosa

I am so happy there's a good friday holiday which allowed me to get in some final gaming session before my nephew and niece arrives then  I won't be able to host any gaming sessions at my place for a while. Best pick of the week has to be Divinare with The Doge Ship coming in second. Lets see what I played and my thoughts:

SUBURBIA

Mint did not save me :(

Game Session and Thoughts: 
Lost quite horribly and to 2 newbies (who have never played this game before) to rub it in! I think the main problem was that I changed my engine to a reputation scoring one too late into the game. I should have started to grab reputation instead of income when the B tiles starting showing up in the game. This game requires good planning and knowing when to change from a money generating engine to a reputation generating one. Timing is also quite important but some part is based on luck, referring to the tiles that are drawn. Sometimes the tile that you want will not be affordable to you but will be for someone else down the row. Furthermore, if the player before you is pretty much going on the same track then it will be quite difficult for you. 
Conclusion: 
I have ordered my promo from the BGG store and while I know it doesn't add a lot to the game I will welcome the variety. I twittered about this and Bezier Games replied that there will be an expansion for Suburbia and its already in the late stages of development! That I feel is what the game needs. Similar to Agricola and Le Havre 2 players, With a wider variety of buildings or perhaps even more features, it will increase the interaction amongst players as well as the replayability of the game. This is still recommended from me and I cannot wait to try a few more solos to hone my skills! :D 

CO2

I am the Black player btw...

Game Session and Thoughts: 
Ah finally I get to bring this monster out again to play it PROPERLY this time. Another friend was there and she was also hoping to finally play it properly after a mistake-filled first game for her. We were also using this to see if her sister was up to taking on heavier games. Short answer first, she is and she was scoring pretty well (our final tallies were in the 100+ which is surprising to me as well). Quite early on I ran into the issue which Jon previously talked about and which is a pet peeve for others and that is what is the point of me installing a project when it will just be stolen by another player? I had a small discussion with another player in my latest game about this and he mentioned that it is more beneficial to propose and install projects versus actually building them. Now I have not deeply analysed this to see if its true but if it is, then it certainly makes sense in a game that has quite a few rules already going against the norm (i.e. buying a CEP doesn't increase the market price). Now don't be mistaken that you can ignore constructing power plants entirely, you need to have a few for those quick scoring points and possible ownership of a region and thus grabbing all its left over CEPs at the end of the game and of course, to score UN cards, but perhaps the focus shouldn't be on over constructing. Perhaps a better plan is to install appropriate projects so as to manipulate the others to use up their resources or build plants where it is not very beneficial to them. 
Conclusion: 
I will want to give this game a few more tries to see if I can break through the surface and finally appreciate this game for all its worth. Right now it feels as if I am just only scratching the surface with this rather multi-layer game. I want to say that this game is recommended but I know that it is not for everyone and given the complexity to teach, absorb and then being able to play this game well, I will have to say its a try before you buy. Oh and do see if you can print out some stickers to pimp out your CEPs, they look much nicer that way ;)


SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS

Green player won. I was Yellow.

Game Session and Thoughts: 
I wanted to bring this out again to see if it will survive to have a place in my collection. Sadly though after this play I don't think I will keep the game. This time we played with the full complement of 4 players and while I started sabotaging early on, it seems that we did not do a good job guarding a player and by the 3rd round or so, he had managed to collect all this books and won the game. I had only collected 2 by then but I was nowhere near the 3rd or 4th book. 
Pet Peeves:
This game requires a lot of spatial awareness and the 2 ladies that I was playing with were complaining about this point. We discussed a little as well about gender and spatial awareness and but I will not get into THAT discussion :P
Another pet peeve about the game is the luck of the draw. Sometimes you have cards in your hand that doesn't help you at all and instead of wasting a turn to draw new cards, you might as well play cards to try to prevent anyone else from grabbing their books. I suspect that if this was played properly (with everyone guarding each other), this could be a very frustrating game as there is no timer function that will end the game after a certain number of rounds.
Conclusion: 
After playing with 4, I feel that perhaps this game is best played with 2 such that you are aware of what each other is doing and you will be constantly either helping yourself or screwing your single opponent. We haven't really explored using the Gargoyle yet but it can be easily dismissed by opponents by them discarding 3 cards. Unfortunately, this game is not for me and I won't be keeping it.


IL VECCHIO

I won! Using the use Priest and get Wheel + $2 as well power

Game Session and Thoughts: 
I managed to get the initial tile which gave me the bonus that when I took 2 Priests, I will get 1 Wheel + $2 as a bonus. My plan was to use that to my advantage to and then travel around for free. I also decided to go grab an end game tile early so I know what I was aiming for. Those really helped a lot as my end game objective was to grab the Medici crests and I was scrambling to place my worker on the rows to grab the tile. It helped also that they gave me bonus 1 point each at the end of the game. The game is easy to teach and quite straight forward. Unfortunately there's not really a lot of theme to it so that may make grasping the concepts a little bit tougher for new players. Iconography is simple and easy to understand after a few rounds and the component quality is nice with good art. The only small gripe I have was the inclusion of 2 boards that are the same except for colors. I do wish they have provided a different board to add to the replayability.
Conclusion: 
I won with about 54 points but given that the scoring track is up to almost a 100, I am wondering if anyone can achieve that at all. Right now there is still a high replayability factor because of the different start bonus tiles we can grab as well as the bonus and end game scoring tiles we may get during the game. However I forsee that with many more plays the game may wear out. I am also not sure if this bonus tile that I have gotten is imbalanced but lets see if I manage to get future plays in if I can test this theory. Try before you buy!


THE CAVE

Yawn... when is it ending ...?

Game Session and Thoughts: 
This is my first play of the game. I have played K2 previously and that brought me into the gaming group (Cult Of The New) that I am involved in right now. The Cave is from the same designers as K2 and while I was hoping to give this a go I have heard mixed reviews about this game. 
Players are all explorers trying to navigate this cave system, by means of tile laying) and collecting tokens for actions done (i.e. taking picture, exploring lakes or navigating narrow passageways). Players need to carefully manage their resources as well and when the final cave tile is placed, have 2 turns to make it back to base camp or be disqualified. Players then count up their tokens and whoever has the most points will win the game. 
Seems pretty straight forward game. We found ourselves moving around quite easily and then scampering back to base camp to replenish our supplies and then venturing out again. Repeat and Rinse until the last tile is revealed. I took a LOT of photographs and won by about 3 points. I did not do a lot of swimming in the lakes like my opponents but since most of the tiles I had revealed are photographs, I was lucky to win by that. That said, I don't have many good things to say about the game. What went wrong?
Pet Peeves:
For starters, I am not sure what the tent does. I mean it takes up 2 spaces in your backpack and you can spend 2 action points to set it up and gain access to the 4 spaces it provides. Ideally, it should allow you to extend your range so that you can explore further but the catch seems to be how are you going to get back to base camp then to replenish everything? If you can head back to your tent and replenish all the time, then that makes the tent much more valuable but for the entire game none of us were using the tents except when my friend tried to test the mechanism for this.
Supplies are a pain to manage. You are quite limited in terms of exploring tiles by how much supplies you are carrying before you have to high tail it back to base camp. If you run out of supplies, then you are spending your turn mostly moving 1 space. Its horrendously slow and painful if you do that as my friend discovered. As mentioned above, the tent doesn't seem to help much at all! Very odd.
The depth of the cave creates a very odd perception and some confusion with us. When you place a tile that has a rope icon, that means that this tile is deeper so you place a 25meters icon if this was the first you encountered. Now if you descend and encounter another similar tile, you place the 50meters icon and so on and so forth. However, there are cases where 2 separate tracks may be joined by placing a single cave tile and there in lies the problem of depth. If the 2 trails were of different depth to begin with, what happens when you join them together ? This depth concept may seem interesting and thematic, but game play wise can create confusion and I feel that it should be explained more clearly in the rules or with more examples.
Finally, the bits. There are a LOT Of chits for all different types of challenges faced as well as supplies, ropes etc etc. SO MANY MANY that you need a good plano box to ensure that everything is sort out nicely for easy setup and tear down. 
Conclusion: 

This game did not grab me like what K2 did. My friend commented that in K2 at least you can see clearly where you are heading and plan how to get there whereas The Cave is largely due to luck of your draw. You may end up getting screwed if you keep exploring lake tiles when you don't have a raft or oxygen tanks and have to head back to base camp just to reconfigure your inventory. Gameplay can get draggy as well due to the number of tiles you have to explore. Some players I guess can potentially drag the game on if they focused on clearing all the available spaces and not on exploring. This was a MEH for me and is not for me. Not recommended.


THE PALACES OF CARRARA

Spin spin the wheel...

Game Session and Thoughts: 
This is my first play of the game. Ah another essen release which I have heard about and was interested to try but not interested enough to grab myself a copy. This is a game that includes a sealed envelope with instructions for an advanced game and advice that you play the basic game a few times before you embark on the advanced game. Being the seasoned gamers we are (*wink wink*) we decided to jump straight into the advanced. My opponents have played this once before but this is my first game. Explanation was simple enough  and I could grasp the concepts easily. In the game, you are trying to manage your resources and determine when is the most opportune time for you to make use of your 6 scoring pawns (each can only be used once in the entire game). When some has met the end game conditions (3 cards determine the end game conditions), he/she can declare the game is over and score extra bonus points. Players then tally up all the points they have on the board and whoever has the most points is the winner.
There are quite a few interesting mechanism to the game. First is the resource wheel. At any 1 time, there should be at most 11 blocks in various colors (6 altogether I believe). The wheel is also divided into segments which shows prices of each color of block and are different from segment to segment. During your turn, if you decide to make a purchase from the wheel, you can either just select a segment and buy the blocks on it (any number) and pay the costs OR rotate the wheel once, populate the starting segment to top up total number of blocks to 11 and then make a purchase. 
The blocks are used to buy building tiles which you can then place on different sections/cities on your board. The requirement to build the buildings is you must pay a number of blocks as denoted by the top right corner of the building tile and also depending on the section/city you wish to place. Leftmost city is WHITE and only allows building tiles which you have paid in WHITE blocks only. next city accepts buildings paid with YELLOW and/or WHITE blocks and the right most will accept buildings paid with ANY blocks. 
The most important concept of the game are the scoring pawns. During your turn you can, instead of any of the other actions choose to score by placing a scoring pawn onto any of the scoring sections on your board or on the main board. On your board, you can for example, score all building tiles that have the same icon on it. Thus, depending on which city the building is in, you will score points/money or both. You will also collect that many icons as the number of buildings you have activated. The other type of scoring will be on the main board and only 1 scoring pawn can be allocated to each scoring space. These scoring spaces will score for all buildings in a particular city but only if you meet the requirements (i.e. for the Black city, you can only score if there are 3 buildings in that city). You will also get the tokens for those buildings you have not previously activated. 
The final concept will be the objectives board which will show you 3 scoring objectives that also represent end game conditions as well as a bonus objective.
It is quite a fun game with good art, nice component pieces but not exactly dripping with theme. The scoring spaces make for a tense game as well because you need to monitor what your opponents are doing less they activate the scoring before you do.
Pet Peeves:
This is like a multi-player solitaire because the only interactions you will have will be the market where you can buy the stones and the limited scoring spots. But often I don't find myself being overly affected by these and was pretty much doing my own thing and playing my own game. Limited interaction.
There is also a runaway leader because it is often quite difficult to block someone from building in their city unless there is a cooperative effort to empty the market of that particular block. Our end game scoring were quite far apart with 2 of us almost getting looped by the leader.
Conclusion: 

Its a light-medium weight Euro game that mixes a few interesting concepts together. Quite nicely executed and easy to learn and play. Not much interaction though. I will play it again but probably not like it enough to grab my own copy. A friend mentioned that this second time he played it did not seem as fun as the first. Oh I did not mention that timing is very important in the game because while you will often want to wait and store up resources before buying and scoring but if someone else grabs the spot before you, it may screw with your plans a bit. Try before you buy!


THE DOGE SHIP

Much screwage was committed...

Game Session and Thoughts: 
This is my first play of the game. I have heard of this game and seen the box and all but wasn't too interested in it. Still I was glad to have been able to give it a go when my friend bought it and brought it over. 
The game is a light-medium weight euro where players are taking actions using action discs to build gondolas (for money and scrolls), barriers (for protection against high waters and special benefits when taking other actions), get money, purchase plans for gondolas and barriers and ships and ultimately, building the Doge ship which will also allow the game to end when the entire ship has been built. 
At the start of a round, the start player will roll a number of dice (depending on the number of players) and place them in the corresponding track. All actions spaces up to where the die has been placed (i.e. if the red die is a 4, then action spaces to the left and up to the die can be activated) are free. Each spaces beyond that die will cost an additional $1 (i.e. if you want to activate Space 6 and the die is on 4, you will need to pay $2). Each player will have a number of action discs and taking turns, each player will place their action disc onto an action space and perform that activity. When all players have gone their turn, players will check the event card to see if it is High water or the Doge has arrived for an inspection. 
For high water, players check the number of barriers they have against the number indicated on the event card. If they have less barriers, they will lose 2 action tokens for the next round. If they are equal, then they lose 1. Otherwise they are safe. 
If its an inspection, players will now secretly bid a number of scrolls they have collected. The player with the most scrolls will score 6 points, the 2nd, 3 and so on. 
The game will end only if the entire Doge ship has been completed and then players have a final inspection and whoever has the most points will win the game. 
So you are trying to effectively chain your activities such that you can build 2 things with 1 action disc rather than taking 2 turns to build the things that you wanted. You are also trying to earn enough money to be able to buy a ship component and then build it later before your opponents do. There are 6 different sections to the ship requiring different number of ship components to complete the section however there is a space on the board which, when activated, allows you to replace another already built ship component. Art is quite straight forward and easy on the eyes. Components are nice cardboard quality chits. Interestingly, there is a money track instead of money chits to denote how much money you have.
Pet Peeves:
The main pet peeve will be the length of the game. We had quite a lot of fun building barriers and gondolas but not so the actual ship itself. If all players end up milling around and not building the ship, then the game could drag on and be lengthy. However, since building the ship will score you points, I don't think this will be a big issue.
Conclusion: 

It is a nice game but doesn't bring much new things or concepts. Most of the mechanisms you will have probably played in other games already so nothing new there. I will play it again perhaps with 4 or 2 and see how that goes. Try before you buy.


DIVINARE

Wait did I already see 4 yellows? Is that the only Yellow left in the game?

Game Session and Thoughts: 
This is my first play of the game. Now I have seen this game and heard of its hype at GENCON 2012 but I had thought it was a light filler and did not look too much into it. Besides, at that time I was more interested in Seasons from Asmodee :P Boy was that a mistake after playing my first game last week. 
The game is quite simple to play. Players will have a certain number of cards in their hand. These cards belong to 1 of 4 colors (red, yellow, green and white). At the start, you will pass a certain number of cards to the player on your right. This "event" will occur a few times during the game, depending on how many cards all players have left as well as the number of players.
During your turn, you have to play a card and then move your token for that location (i.e. play yellow card, activate your token in the yellow area) either to another spot. Now each location has a few sections with numbers on them. The aim of the game is to place your token on the number that you want to guess for that color. You are guessing at the end of that round, how many cards of that color has been revealed. If you are spot on, you will score 3 points. If you are adjacent to that number, 1 point and if you are way off, you will be penalized 1 point. There are sections at the extreme ends that will give you extra bonus points if you score.
After each player has had a chance to be the start player, the player with the most total points will win the game.
What surprised me was how deep the game eventually became for me. Initially after the rules were explained, I was thinking "Oh, this will be a simple game to play..." Then as the game progressed I was thinking "ok I have seen 3 Yellows, shall I pass them along or keep?" Then it was "ok now I have received some more Yellow cards... now wait how many was that ?" 
During my turn, I suddenly realised "Oh my... I will need to play a card AND move my token EVERYTIME? That will mean that if I knew the exact count (or have a pretty good idea), I will still need to play my cards in such a way I will still remain in that number to win the 3 points!" 
As you can tell by now, this game has many layers and its not as straight forward nor as simple as I had initially thought. Do you pass your card to someone else so that you can lock in your choice ? Or do you choose to forgo your choice (you can move your token back to the starting point and not suffer penalty) so that you will not get penalty ? So many choices and it makes for a nice meaty game.
Oh and production value is really good and the locations look very realistic and 3D. Art is also nicely done.
Pet Peeves:
So does this game have issues? Well if you are prone to Analysis Paralysis then yea. You may be trying to remember all the cards that have been played, start to calculate the probabilities and thus not be able to make a decision. 
Some can also say that the luck of the draw is important. But all these are minor quibbles I feel. 
Conclusion: 
Well as you can tell by now, this is my biggest surprise and hit for this week. The intricacies and the depth of play really surprised and astounded me. For such an easy game to teach, it sure packs a punch and I highly recommend this game! Go grab yourself a copy now!


PLATO 3000

Game Session and Thoughts: 
Been some time since I brought it out to play this and I think that having played a few more of similar type of games (set collection or light card fillers), I think the shine for Plato 3000 is starting to wear off. It could be that the lunch group was suffering from lunch-food coma ( ;P ). It could also be that for 4 players the game doesn't work as well. Might be good for 2 or 3 but maybe for 4, we will need 2 sets to really speed things along. My colleague who played it once before and did not like it initially but after this session she liked the game. She's not too sure why she liked it better this time lol...

Conclusion: 
I think that this game really shines with 2 or 3. Though with the influx of similar games like Guildhall and to a lesser extend, Love Letter and Coup, not sure if this has enough legs to carry it past the rest to shine above them. For me so far I think Guildhall and Love Letter seems to be beating Plato 3000.



MORD IM AROSA

Game Session and Thoughts: 
I got my own copy after playing it previously and I was eager to break it out with the office and see how it went. We had more fun probably dropping the pieces in and trying to guess where they are than the actual revealing and guessing itself haha. Its interesting in that when we dropped, I could have sworn most of the cubes were stuck in floor 5 or 4 but when we revealed we were surprised there weren't many there. Its amazing how our ears can be deceived and this makes the game that much more challenging. Gameplay wise it is a very light game with the tower as the gimmick. Its good for new comers to get used to what we call boardgames and open their eyes but probably only scratches the very top of my itch for deduction games.
Pet Peeves:

The base where the tower sits on (or table) will probably be the easiest to guess because cubes dropping through the cardboard will not sound the same as the table the tower is resting on. That being said, it can still confuse others especially because your own cube needs to be sitting there else you will be penalised. The other Peeve I have is the way the tower is built. If you have an improper tower (i.e. some of the cardboard pieces aren't sitting nicely) then your tower maybe skewed. Anyway, these are just minor peeves to a light party-like game.

Conclusion: 

Definitely not a game for heavy or even medium weight gamers I feel but can only be a light filler with the tower as a gimmick. Its nice to assemble and look at and play it once or twice but in the long run it probably will wear off the freshness of the game. Still, a try before you buy.

AOB

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Game Session: Get Bit, Bora Bora, Ground Floor, Railways of the World Card Game, Tanto Cuore, CO2, Village, Kaigan, Aladdin's Dragons

I have decided that for games which I have talked about before in previous posts, I will not elaborate too much on them unless there is something new to talk about them. With that, I played several "new" games, both in terms of to me and to the gaming industry. Lets get on with this!


Get Bit

Ah its been a long time since i brought out my copy of Get Bit and I decided to bring my lighter fare to office to play with my colleagues given the relaxed mood we want plus the short time we can play during lunch. Get Bit involves players playing cards so that they can get to move forward in the "queue". Whoever is the player closest to the shark will get bitten and loses a component / limb of their body. At the end when there are only 2 people left, the player who is furthest in front will win the game. The only and most important strategy is trying to out guess your opponents so as to ensure you won't be caught at the back with the shark. Its a light and quick game with cool bits (lego-like figures where you can pull limbs off and mix and mash and the shark) and an interesting theme. Good for a party!


Bora Bora

Stephen Feld's first of FOUR releases in 2013! I am glad our group managed to grab a hold of this copy and play it before I decide to pull the trigger on this. Final verdict? Yes I pulled the trigger and I cannot wait to try this with my other groups and see how it goes. First impressions upon opening the box is the amount of setup required. That and also the super busy player board. I mean its really jam packed with symbols galore and it was overwhelming at the beginning. Luckily though, after the first round or so, we got into the grove and the player board is actually helpful and good. But there are really quite a lot of bits and cards to setup for the game. Interestingly though, as you play through the game and pieces are put back into the box, you can start to keep these pieces and thus tear down is relatively less time consuming.
Lets talk about the gameplay itself. During the start of each round (6 rounds in total), players will roll their 3 dice concurrently. Then beginning with the start player, they will choose 1 die and place it on one of 7 areas available to perform an action. The only condition is the die placed must be smaller than any previously placed die on the same area. There are god cards that you can play to overcome this criteria. Then you will perform that action. Actions include building a new hut in an adjacent land, buying a Male or Female tile which gives you certain benefits when activated or tattooed/sea shelled, choose to tattoo a Male tile or sea shell a female tile (basically these tiles provide a 1 time benefit when tattooed/sea shelled) and many others. Once all players have placed all 3 die, then you move to phase 2 where you can activate one Male and one Female tile to gain the benefits they provide. Then you go to phase 3 where you will resolve the other areas of the board one by one. This will score you more points, award the first player, award a god tile, allow you to purchase jewellery (which gives points at the end of the game) as well as complete 1 objective and pick a new objective. All tiles not purchased are removed and a new round begins. The game will end after 6 rounds and there is 1 more final scoring and whoever has the most points will win the game.
It is certainly a very deep game with many paths to victory. In a way, you can think of this as Kingsburg advanced (due to the die placing mechanism). There are really a lot of end game scoring available and thus, like many games of this nature, you should start off with 2 or 3 objectives and then focus on them throughout the game. You will probably not fare well if you change objectives in the middle of the game. There is plenty to do and score points with and you cannot neglect any areas especially those that will provide end game scoring as there will be a lot of points to be scored at the end. The game also provides you plenty of opportunity to sabotage each other as you can place die to block opponents as well as purchase the jewellery pieces that he needed to complete an objective or take the objective he wanted away from him.
All in all, its quite a good game but I will definitely want to play more to see if there are any areas of the games that are skewed to win and thus making it mandatory to expand on that to win. Good components for an Alea game and quite well thought out game from Stephen. Recommended!


Felix the cat in the sack

Light Auction game next where each player gets a set of same cards (all cats including 2 negative point cats and 2 dogs). In a round, all players will simultaneously select a card and then, in player order, place them from left to right. Then starting with the start player, he will place a bid. This bid is to win all the cards for that turn. The first player to pass will receive 2 coins. 2nd player will receive coints and 3rd will receive 6. The winner will take all the cards (be it good or bad). The dogs help to chase away negative cats or highest positive one but will cancel each other out if both are played. The winner is the one with the most points from the cards as well as most remaining money left. Light and pretty good with oversized cards. I am not really good with auction games though as I have a problem gauging the value of a card and may often overbid. Still the group had fun as we commented on the funny artwork of the cats. Try before you buy!


Ground Floor

One of the kickstarter games that gotten a lot of hype for its components but also some people have complained quite a bit about the game for its duration and dragginess. In essence its a worker placement game where you will get more and more workers nearer to the end of the game and thus have more and more actions to take and choose from and thus surprisingly, the game can get longer. During the game we are all contractors or real estate development companies and we are trying to build our tower as high as we can so as to score a lot of points and win the game. The main currencies of the game are Information and Money but there are only about 2 or 3 options to obtain either during the game. once all players have placed their "job scheduling chips", the game will go into resolution for each job. That is the end of the round and the game will end when a player has built at least 5 stories in his tower. The game does take quite a bit of time to get thru and can get really tedious at times. The publicity track did not appeall to me to invest in as it will, at most, allow you to employ new workers first as well as decide first where to place your workers. To me, it is an OK game I guess but I don't think I will want to play it again. It just did not click with me. Components are really nice, thick boards and thick chits with a nice modern-like artwork to boot.Pity though as I really wanted to like this game. I have yet to try Skyline, the kickstarter bonus that came with the game. Try before you buy!


Railways of the World Card Game

I have been wanting to try this game for some time now as I really liked the base game however never managed to justify the cost. There was a recent warehouse sale and it was going for really cheap but I did not go down on the first day and it was snapped up quick. Managed to play that snapped up copy though so its cool. Its a relatively straight forward pick up and deliver game where you have cards that you use to lay tracks to stations and then you can choose to deliver goods. Everything that you do will score you points and the player with the most points at the end will win the game. There is an end game scoring as well based on the combination of goods you have collected as well as if your tracks are of a bigger value to a station and thus you will score points for that station as well. I tried going by the goods method while my opponent went by the laying tracks and station method and she trashed me horribly. It was not a bad game and I had fun but I will probably not play this again. A few more gripes about the game. It can get really messy. Because the cards you are laying are rather free form and there is no board, you can end up needing a lot of space to play the game and having to shift cards slightly to the left or right to accomodate for new tracks and stations. The cards aren't really of a normal size so sleeving maybe a problem.Since most scores are usually around the 150 points region, the scoring track is woefully inadequate and not large enough. The scoring bits should have been made smaller to facilitate multiple players' scoring bits on the score track. Try before you buy!


Tanto Cuore

Another game that has peaked my interest and I have wanted to try. This is a dominion-clone with 1 different mechanism and a cuter and anime-like theme. Components wise, the game is very pretty. Pink cards, nice art, anime-looking maids (some in compromising positions, be warned!) and they even provided very nice card seperators and it all fits nicely (even sleeved) into one of those boxes that you can use to store Magic the Gathering cards. During the game, players are trying to hire maids which will provide them with benefits when "serving" as well as victory points at the end of the game. Similar to Dominion, you will have 1 "serving" where you can play a Maid card to get benefits, you will have 1 hire where you can use "Love" which is the currency, to get new Maids from the town. The main difference is that you can "chamber" your maid (play the maid card into your private chambers) so as to declutter your deck. In addition, there are private maids which you can hire and they go straight to your chamber and provide you with a benefit every turn. Another smaller difference from Dominion is you can purchase bad effects to be placed into another player's private chambers. This may cause a maid to fall ill (thus preventing that maid from providing victory points or benefits) or give you negative points if not removed. The game will end when 2 maid stacks are empty in town.
This game requires a good sense of humor and the right crowd to be able to pull it off. If you role play and make suggestive tones or just simply read off the phases or your actions during the game and if the group does not get offended, then this game can be quite fun. We were amused by all the suggestive tones being made by the phases and our actions but found the game could drag on as its not that simple to just clear 2 stacks to end the game. Near the end, I got bored of repeating myself and the fun factor nosedived until we just wanted the game to end. It could be because we weren't playing properly as we just thought like we were playing dominion when we can do a lot of sabotaging on each other but we did not. I will definitely want to play this a few more times and see how it goes. I wonder if my office crowd will be amused as I am at the game :) Try before you buy!


CO2

Tried another 5 player game (yes I am asking to be punished lol) and this time the ending was quite surprising to me. Near the end of 3rd Decade we realised to our horror that the earth wasn't going to make it. The last 2 turns we negotiated with each other on how to safe the earth so that we can continue playing but a bad draw of 40-points for the last dirty power plant brought us to 500 and we lost. It was surprising to me because this is the first time the game won and we all lost. I love how my pimped out CEPs looked on the game. I also realised I played 1 rule wrongly (dang it, this rule book needs to be improved!) in that when we build a power plant, we must have at least the tech level on that particular tech tree as that many tech cubes on the power plant. This will probably cause a lot of the previous games to be tainted as well. I wonder, given the multitude of rules clarifications, if the designer realises there's something wrong with how the rules were arranged/designed and if there will be improvements in the future. Still I do enjoy the game and hope to finally play it all the way through correctly for once. Recommended!

Village

Another game of village as we helped to punch out a new sealed set and taught the owner how to play. This time however it dragged on really long as no one really wanted to finish the game. However, due to this, I found myself being able to complete the touring portion even though I started at the middle of the game and also move myself up a lot on other tracks. As usual, I forgo the market track and I won by 3 points in the end over the player that focused a lot on the market track. Its pretty interesting how, by dragging the game on, I had so much opportunity to start my travelling and went to 5 places to get quite good scoring. If you haven't gotten this game, go grab it. Expansion is coming out too and can play up to 5. Recommended!


Kaigan

Finally played Jon's hidden gem as mentioned in our podcast. Art wise, as mentioned by jon, it looks horrible. The choice of components as well is quite surprisingly. There are 2 main boards and the boards used to represent the map of Japan is made of paper. PAPER! OMG. Still gameplay wise its like Zooloretto / Coloretto on steriods. The subtle way in which you are placing your cards as well as the order in which the cards have been placed in a row and when you choose to claim a row is intriguing. Then there is another way of scoring depending on how many cubes you have placed on the map board. i think it is quite interwoven the various mechanics but during the game I wasn't really into it so much. I guess it could be because I have had several games before Kaigan and the gaudy art was not helping my involvement of the game. Still I can see the appeal of the game and I would say try before you buy!


Aladdin's Dragons

A game I have never played before and this looks really old. To my surprise, its rated within the top 500 on BGG and designed by Richard Breese and published in 2000. This game is all about bluffing and reading your opponents to win artefacts. The game will end when all artefacts have been taken and the player who has the most artefacts at the end of the game wins. During each player's turn, they will place a chit from behind their screen into one of several areas available on the board. They will place the chit face down. Each player has identical set of chits numbering from 1 to 9. After all players have placed the chits, the areas will resolve 1 by 1. The player with the highest sum total from the chits he has placed there will usually win the rewards/action of that area. Later on in the game, players have access to artefacts that can add +3 to their total OR double the value of a chit which can make the game interesting. There are spells as well which can turn a 9-point chit to a 1-point chit. There is a guard at the palace as well which you have to beat to be able to have the option to purchase artefacts. However the game can be quite prone to analysis paralysis as players can spend quite a good deal of time mulling over what to play and where to play it. For a game that is almost 13 years old, it is quite nicely designed and fun. If it ended a little earlier though might have been  much better. Try before you buy!

Zombicide Season 2 kickstarter
If you aren't aware, there was a little game called Zombicide (ok not so little) that was released from Kickstarter with much fanfare and a LOT Of miniatures. It is a co-op game where players control characters and try to survive or win in a number of scenarios as provided in the game. Recently, Cool Mini or Not (creators of Zombicide) have released Season 2 on kickstarter! It is a standalone game by itself and in the kickstarter they are also releasing Toxic City which is an expansion that is compatible with either Season 1 or Season 2. News is that within the first 2 minutes the project has been funded (their target was usd25k) and now, with 25 days to go, they are almost reaching usd600k! I have decided to back this (my first kickstarter backing!) and I can understand now why it is so addicting. To keep refreshing the page and seeing the number jump and seeing all those stretch goals being unlocked makes me all excitable but also makes the waiting that much more tedious. Still if you are interested in the game, do check it out and go back it! With the amount of goodies they throw into the game it is definitely worth while :)
Check it out here!

Week ending 24th Feb 2013: Hoplomachus The Lost Cities, Innovation Figures in the Sand, Taluva, Formula Motor Racing, CO2, Snowdonia, Morels, Heartland, Homesteaders, Express 01, Love Letter, Le Havre The Inland Port, Phantom, Blood Bowl Team manager, Village, Siberia The Card Game, Coup

Quite a few new games and the highlight was FINALLY being able to play CO2 again with 5 are the highlights of this session. Lets take a look!

Hoplomachus The Lost Cities

A Kickstarter game that was backed by my friend who brought it over to give it a go before deciding on the standalone expansion that is currently on Kickstarter now. This is a quick gladiatorial type of combat game where 2 players pit their heroes and armies in a bid to kill the opposing hero and win the game. This game can also be played as a solo game against various arena animals/creatures. The main focus of the game are chips which are used to indicate your unit as well as health. During your turn, you will draw from a bag containing chips of your army as well as tactics which are like spells. Then you will choose from 4 available chips to execute. It can be either a unit, in which case you "summon" the unit, place it on 1 of 6 summon points and stack a number of red chips underneath the army unit to indicate its health. It can also be a tactic chip in which case the effects of the spell is executed. This game is all about battling and gaining enough Crowd Favour points will allow your Hero to unfreeze and start to move on its own and fight as well. Turn passes from player to player until 1 player manages to kill the opponent's  Hero and wins the game. It is a fast pace easy to learn game. You move close enough so that you can start to whack at someone. Combat is dependant on the dice you can roll and how many hits you have rolled. Each hit will deal 1 damage to the enemy. I won with the opponent's Hero barely even out of the gate because my unit was fast moving. The game comes with 3 different groups but replayability maybe limited because the base set of units are the same. There are some unique units to each group though and they do showcase the power and strategy that is unique to the group. Production quality is quite good as the game mat is similar to those used in the landscape map of Wings of War. Nice thick mousepad like material. Average game for me but I won't say no to playing it again.


Innovation Figures in the Sand

I have loved the base game as well as the expansion but having never been able to bring it out very often, I had to let go my copies. Innovation is quite an intriguing game to me with all the splaying and the icons and now there's an online version which seems to make the game flow much more smoothly. My friend had bought the latest expansion and thus we gave it a go. Figures essentially adds well, famous figures to the game as well as new features to the game. I won't go too much into details but the game now takes longer with all expansions added in as each player needs to have 8 achievements to win. We did not really get to use a lot of the Figures expansion features as we drew more of the previous expansion than figures. Its still quite a challenging game deciding what to go for and what to meld and I realised having a good draw of hand is quite important to progress forward and win. I am still abit meh about the game but i won't reject to another game just to make sure that is how I feel. Components wise, card art and stock are just the same as the base art. If you prefer a nicer art, do take a look at the IELLO version.

Taluva

Played 3 games of this and my friend Jon mentioned about the imbalanced for the first player because he/she will have an advantage in this game. Also, since this plays quite like Chess, if other players are not diligent in blocking others, they could easily allow that opponent pull ahead. I did enjoy my games though as it forces me to think and see where I can block and still score. Perhaps this might make a better 2 player game but I have yet to try with just 2. Components are nice and the final picture looks really good with the different levels and all the nice wooden buildings. I still feel this is a good game.

Formula Motor Racing

A card game about F1 racing by GMT? Really? This has gotta be some form of joke ya? Well lo and behold, my friend had this game in his collection and we brought it out to play. It reminds me a lot of Tiki Topple. During your turn, you will play a card with which to manipulate the current standing of the race cars which are setup in 1 straight line. When the game ends, you will total up the points where your cars are positioned and whoever has the most points will win the game. So its a fast filler that is quite dependant on the cards you draw and how you play them. I think it will benefit more if, like Tiki Topple, the colors that you are aiming for are secret at the beginning. This will not make it so easy for other players to guess what colors you are and target you specifically.

CO2

Finally managed to play a 5 player game with ALL the right rules. It certainly took quite a bit of time and can be frustrating at times. Some of the issues Jon mentioned in his rant on BGG I definitely faced for example goals that do not seem fair when faced with so many players (i.e. the UN Goal objective). While you are faced with at most 12 moves in the entire game, these 12 moves will take quite a bit of time for them to finish. Having only 12 moves also severely limits what you can do in the game. Also the tech tree's powers are even more evident in a 5 player game as the player who won was maxed out in several of the tech trees AND had the leader in tech objective card. The action cards in your hands are also more important because they can give you that much needed white cube to rush in and built that power plant before another player can. So while I still love the game, I won't play it with 5. At most 4 will do for me. Time to try the Solo game and see how it fares. Still loving it and I managed to get a set of skull-like stickers to stick on my CEPs. A little pimpin' :)

Snowdonia

Played Snowdonia Variant where players can choose which side they want to begin from and plays up to 4. I think this variant does not create as much competition because it is dependant on which side the players choose. 1 player could very well be all by himself at 1 side without much competition. So I think if I were to play Snowdonia again I will play it in its original version. Its an ok game for me and nothing fantastic as far as I can see.

Morels

Been wanting to bring this simple set collection game out for a go again as it has been some time since I played this. Its still quite a nice game but I am wondering about its replayability. There are already quite a lot of set collection type games in the market and I have quite a few of them so I am not sure, but perhaps I need a few more plays to determine its final value in my collection.  One thing i realise i am disliking is how card games require you to refill the market or the central path where all the cards are by pushing the cards down and refilling from the end of the line. This is amazing tedious especially in this game where its a constant refill every turn. Luckily I sleeve my cards thus they won't wear down so fast but its a hassle to keep pushing cards down the line. I wish designers can stop this "mechanism".

Heartland
A game that I manage to snag at a recent FLGS warehouse sale (first of its kind in Singapore!) This is a tile laying game with a small tech tree at the side. During your turn, you will get to lay a 2-square tile or a 1-square tile (each player begins with the same set of five 1-square tiles). When you lay the tile, you will get to score either victory points or farm points. Farm points are used in the small tech tree and if you manage to max out any of the 5 columns, you will get to score a livestock tile which gives you some points at the end of the game as well. If all of your markers are at or past a certain row where the farm pieces are, then you get to place your farm piece which will net you victory points every round and also prevent other players from scoring victory points on the fields your farm is on. Its an interesting game as you are trying to score more for yourself while at the same time blocking other players. The tech tree seems a bit odd as its possible for a player to max out a column during a turn immediately. Granted we were not very adapt at blocking each other in our first game but still to be able to do so seems odd. Once a farm is out on the board though players start to target the farms to minimise scoring per turn for that player. Components are nice and thick and functional. Art wise is a little bland but functional. Not a bad purchase for the price.

Homesteaders

This time I had a better idea of what I am doing but the game seems to end too early when I am just getting into the grove of the game. One little nagging thing I have with games like Homesteaders is the ability for concurrent play. While I am not saying my opponents will cheat, I would like winning to be not tainted and not due to mistakes or carelessness made by opponents. Of course you can enforce such that each player takes his/her turn before the next player takes his/her turn. This will however make the game possibly unbearably long. It certain has enough buildings to allow for sufficient replayability but since all buildings are available every game, I guess it is possible for you to plan such that each game you will have the most optimal sequence of buildings to select and win the game. I will definitely want to give this a few more tries.

Express 01

Sigh. I really wanted to like this game. I had thought it looked interesting enough to give it a go. Card quality is very nice and art is not too bad. However the game play with the 2nd group seems to fall very flat. It may still work with the right group but I haven't managed to find the right group. The mechanism where cards in your hand are used to purchase items and potentially they can be used as stocks or routes make it more confusing than if you were playing Glory to Rome which has similar implementation of the cards. If there were a solo variant, that may save it enough for me to keep it in my collection.

Love Letter 

Another 2 rounds of Love Letter. Even though it seems light I enjoy it quite a bit. Somehow though I don't really feel the randomness as readily as others do. I still feel that there's some skill involved especially when you are taking the Guard. Love letter for me so far still trumps Coup.

Le Havre The Inland Port

Played 3 games of this 2 player version of Le Havre and loving it much. I still haven't managed to break the 222 barrier and I am wondering just how I can maximize my game play. I tried going by the food route but somehow along the way when your opponent starts to use your buildings your plans start to get screwed. This is also an ideal game for the iOS especially with a very good AI. I wonder if anyone out there has a good strategy can share with me?

Phantom

Another game of Phantom. This time both of us stored a lot of power on both sides of the tableau and so we were trying to draw Charmer ghosts to draw the Character cards and score. Once that happens though the game went pretty fast. I managed to score my 11 points pretty fast and I won the game. The art is beginning to wear on me because its a lot of neon colors and not aesthetically pleasing. So after a few plays, its kinda unique and interesting but I doubt the replayability will keep it in my collection for long.

Blood Bowl Team manager

Another game where I was so intrigued by the theme of Warhammer that I had to grab it. So far I have YET to play it even once and i was glad to be able to table it finally. Its an interesting card game where you, as a team manager, is laying cards (up to 6 in a round to a maximum of about 5 rounds) which represent your players that are competing for highlights or a tournament for that round. When you play a player, there are certain actions associated with the player which will resolve. Once all team managers have passed, then we will check each highlight and resolve a winner. All will receive the corresponding rewards which may come in the form of Fan Points (victory points), special team cards or even Star Players which will boost your team's capabilities.

Village

Ah, one of my favourites in 2012. I played quite a bit of this once I gotten my own copy and when i was in New York as well last year. Its been quite some time since I brought out my copy to play and boy, am I super rusty. I came in last I think and I am not amused! I used to be quite good with this game but i made some mistakes which probably cost me about 10 points. I wouldn't have won anyway but well it may have made some difference. I used to be able to score quite decently with the Travelling as my main scorer but this game was cut short by another opponent who was aiming to finish the game fast to prevent the winner from gaining too many customer tiles. Still a fun game for me but my friend wasn't too keen to keep the game anymore. Pity as I am looking forward to the expansion and the inclusion of 5 players. I wonder how that will play like.

Siberia The Card Game

Played this with 4 players this time and I am thinking its not suitable for 4. For 2 and 3 maybe but for 4 this makes the game quite hard to control and plan as most of the time, the items you want are snatched up quite quickly. A gripe that I mentioned just now with Morels however is not an issue here as you just replace those cards that were taken by drawing from the deck. There is no need to push the whole row of cards here. Phew! Still average about this game so far as it doesn't bring anything new to the table for me. May not make the cut.

Coup

2 more games of Coup! Taught this to a new player who prefers this to Love Letter. I guess inherently its in my nature to trust someone and with so little clues its hard for me to judge if a person is bluffing or not. So far ALL my challenges have been for naught and I am usually losing in the game of Coup. I did win once tonight though because of my opponent did not pay attention to the coins I have amassed which allowed me to perform a final Coup on him to win the game. So far the "beauty" of this game hasn't really shown itself to me. Lets hope I can get more games in to allow it to shine.


And so that's it, a great week of gaming! :)

Magnum Sal, Core Worlds Galactic Orders, Fairy Tales, Siberia The Card Game, Phantom, Pax, Star Wars the Card Game, CO2, Reef Encounter, Pickomino, The Hobbit Card Game

Not many new games I have played so far but a few good oldies! Lets take a look....

Magnum Sal

I have heard of this game before and was very tempted to get it but I wasn't too sure about the game play so never really got around to it. Luckily my Cult-of-the-New group had managed to get a copy and I get to play! Its so nice to be in a CotN group :P I am very lucky as well! So on with the game. In the game we are all trying to go digging for salt and then return back to deliver them to the King and earn points. So its all about us getting resources and going to the King to score points by turning them in based on the objective tiles available. That is the summarised view of the game. Other things you have to consider are the other players' miners that are in the mine with you that will cost you extra money just to transport salt cubes topside and may even steal cubes away from you. We were working quite hard during the game turning in a lot of objectives whereas only 1 player did not complete any at all till the very last turn and he scored quite a few of the high point objectives to win the game. However it seemed we played a vital rule wrongly, that is after every round, you will take back ALL your miners. This makes a very big change because it will mean that we have to establish our steps down into mine again. Another point that seems wrong is that if you store your cubes all the way to the end, you can score all the objectives that have way higher victory points. If that's the case, it may lead into a stalemate as the only way where rounds will end is when 5 objectives are completed. So jury is still out on this one but definitely requires another play to see where this stands with me.


Core Worlds: Galactic Orders

I have played Core Worlds twice I believe and while it feels like a deck builder, it has an additional element where you use troops to try to conquer planets that are available in the middle of the board. In addition, there are some core worlds which are like final objectives that you already know how to conquer and thus you can build up your deck to prepare for it. Its not a bad game but it doesn't really capture me or compel me to want to play it many times again. My friend had just gotten the expansion and we decided to give it a go. Expansion adds a few boards which give you extra powers like increasing the number of actions you have. To be able to activate them, you have to turn in your tokens that are already on the boards. To place your tokens on the boards, whenever you play cards that have those mysterious symbols, you get to place a token on the respective board. The expansion does add extra dimension to the game as you could plan now to get certain cards into your deck so that you can place your token on the boards. I found the extra action benefit the most useful though the power that lets you purchase a science card at a 3 cost discount to be quite good as well. Its quite a good expansion for the game so I will recommend playing the game with the expansion in the future. Still doesn't really endear me to the game enough to get myself a copy but I wouldn't say no to playing it.


Fairy Tales

Seems to be a newer version of the game that I had previously. The icons seems to be redesigned now and the rules are better. That is all the changes there is though. The game is a very straight forward drafting game that seems to be a lighter version of 7 wonders. With more players there will definitely be more interaction as there are cards which cause other players to flip their cards facedown and thus not allowing those cards to score at the end of the game. Its light, have very nice anime-style graphics and seems to have a back story but since the rule book is very short they did not include the story. Average light-weight game and worth a play or two.


Siberia The Card Game

Managed to get this game out again for another 2 player game. Light good filler that is easy to teach and fast to play. Might be growing on me. Lets see how it plays with 4 because that will make it more competitive as people will scramble to grab the specialists cards that will grant good benefits. Give it a try!


Phantom

Another try of this seemingly fun 2 player game. This time the gameplay feels like chess to me as we battle it out to try to scare the characters with the most points. I feel that this game if you are not on guard all the time, your opponent may just pull ahead and there is certainly no catch up mechanism. I won with 11-2 points! Definitely give it a try before you buy.

Pax

Interesting set collecting game where you are fighting against Rome unless you are the secret spy which means if Rome wins, you win.  During your turn, you will take 3 cards, one at a time and decide where the cards go. This portion is similar to Biblios as you need to decide one at a time where to place them. Then you get to buy cards and play cards from your hand. You will then get income and your turn ends. Now the interesting part of the game is that to win, you will need to have at least 4 of the sets in front of you that have more cards than those that Rome has. Another way to win is if Rome wins and you have the secret spy card. Its not a bad card game but for my first game at least, kinda hard to beat Rome. Its possible that its my first game and I still haven't figured out some of the tactics yet but I can see how this will be fun. Not sure how well it will do with more players though because with 2 its already quite hard to beat rome. Will like to give it a try again to see how it works with more players.


Star Wars the Card Game

Close in the heels of a very successful relaunch of Netrunner, FFG's Star Wars the Card Game had received quite a bit of hype and I was itching to play my copy. Compared to Netrunner, this has a different engine and seems lighter to play. Dark side will have a death star counter which counts to 12 each of his turn thus the game length is limited to at most 12 rounds. Light side will win when Dark side run out of cards OR having destroyed 3 of the Dark side's objectives. During your turn, play is similar to most LCG games where you get to untap/refresh used cards, draw cards, play cards and fight. FFG tried to weave into the game certain concepts because of the theme and by and large it seems an average game. Not bad but seems to be lacking something. I think being a fan of the show and role playing will enhance one's enjoyment of the game. Some issues I have for example how fast you use up your cards in Edge battles makes it seem odd that a game ending condition is if you run out of cards to draw from and you don't get to shuffle your discards back into your deck. I will give it a few more plays to make a final verdict but as of now Netrunner is still ahead of Star Wars the card game for me.


CO2

Sigh, the game that broke my heart this week of playing. I have so far played this 3 times and won all 3 times which makes my head swell. Unfortunately after reading around BGG I realised to my horror my wins are all tainted. That is because of some rules that we have gotten wrongly. For example, I realised that market doesnt increase in price if you buy a CEP from the market (the wording on the player aid seems to suggest otherwise). Also to determine ownership of a region, its not based on the number of power plants you have, but the number of types of plant you have. These and a few other rules really made the previous games I played all very tainted and I feel kinda bummed. I must say though that the rules in the game aren't very friendly to go through and judging from the numerous comments and questions on BGG, a lot of other players feel the same. Nevertheless, I still feel that this is a good game and I cannot wait to try it again WITH ALL the correct rules. I do feel that this game may not be suitable with more than 4. I also would like to play it solo and see how it works. A few of my friends though have totally dissed the game which I guess I can understand some of their points but it did not cause me to dislike the game. Furthermore, I haven't really hit most of the problems they have experienced. Then again, I haven't played this game with more than 3 so far so maybe my opinions may change when I do get a chance to table it for 4 and 5. Tomorrow! I will get a nice rematch with hopefully 4 and see how it goes. Oh and I am pimping my CEPs :P Will post pics once I get my copy and the stickers this week! Definitely give this a try. Highly recommended!


Reef Encounter

Now I have heard of this game and its rated quite highly on BGG and been wanting to give it a try. But something (maybe its the theme or the art) seems to put me off getting my own copy. In Reef Encounter, we are essentially trying to feed our parrot fish polyp tiles and score points for each tile fed at the end of the game. Whoever has the most points will win the game. Reef Encounter is a tile laying game where you are trying to grow your coral until a certain size before you feed to your parrot fish. During the game, certain colors of polyps can "eat" or overgrow other colors of polyps. So in this way, player interaction is crucial as you can play to block others and prevent them from scoring points. Another way to block will be the scoring tiles which you can flip and lock in to ensure certain colors will score more points than the others. It is a medium-heavy game as you are trying to obtain certain polyp tiles and play at the right timing such that you can grow your corals and "cash" them in at the right time before other players decide to take pieces off your corals. Quite a good game and I would like to play it again. Not sure why its not creating as much hype here but I am suspecting the theme itself is not very attractive. Its about marine life and may remind people of an aquarium or a fish tank. That could be the reason why its not as attractive as other widely accepted themes like Fantasy or space. Give it a try!

Pickomino

A light push your luck dice game where you roll as many times as you want but each time you have to lock down dice of the same number. If during a turn you cannot lock down any (because they have previously been locked down), then you end your turn and, if you have an existing domino, have to give it up. When you stop, you will take the domino that has the same sum as all your dice added up. The game ends when there are no more dominos to take and players counts the number of worms they have on their dominos. The player who has the most worms will win the game. Simple, light but not that easy to score dominos and you can even steal your opponents' top most dominos provided you have rolled the exact number. For a light game like this, it can drag on too long and overstay its time on the table. Not a game for me unfortunately.


The Hobbit Card Game

Final game I will talk about today is The Hobbit Card game. This is a bridge like Trick taking game where players play either the Good side (frodo etc) or the Bad side (dragons and orcs etc). Starting with the player who has won a previous trick (or a particular character), players will play cards very similar to bridge. If a player has won a trick, then, depending on his/her character powers, distribute the cards in that trick. At the end of a round (when all cards are played), players check to see what cards they have received. Depending on the symbols of the card, players maybe kicked out of the game. At the end of 2 rounds, the Good side will win when they have at least 1 player left alive with a Good character card. The Bad side will win when all Good players have been eliminated. Light filler game that has the character powers as an interesting twist to a well worn game mechanism. The artwork though I think is based on the original novels. Game play wise, is average only for me. I won't want to play it again though.


So that's it, CO2 being the most exciting and yet most disappointing game for me in this whole set. I hope to report better news again once I have finally played it with all the correct rules!